Thursday, Sept. 4, 2003 | 11:22 a.m.
While other high school seniors cheered on their teams at the first football games of the school year and made plans for the homecoming dance, Tanner Hansen was at home, recovering from multiple surgeries.
The 17-year-old sustained serious injuries when, police say, several other teens who are members of the 311 Boyz gang attacked him and threw a five-pound rock through the window of a truck Hansen was in, crushing his face.
A Clark County grand jury on Wednesday indicted nine teens on 13 felony counts stemming from the attack on Hansen. The charges include three counts of coercion, six counts of battery, three counts of attempted murder and one count of mayhem, all with use of a deadly weapon.
The teens charged are Ernest Bradley Aguilar, 17; Steven Gazlay, 18; Jeff Hart, 17; 16-year-old twins Anthony and Brandon Gallion; Mathew Costello, 17; Christopher Farley, 18; Dominic Harriman, 19; and Scott Morse, 18.
The teens will be charged as adults. Nevada law allows children 8 and older charged with murder, attempted murder and other violent crimes to be automatically certified as adults.
Hansen's mother, Carma Mahn, said she wants "to see that justice is done. These boys need to be held accountable for their actions. These kids have to be stopped."
The rock shattered the left side of her son's face, crushing his nasal cavity, cheekbone and eye socket. The rock also struck and broke his arm.
Several titanium plates now secure the skeletal structure of Hansen's face and his mouth is wired shut. In the weeks following the July incident, the Cimarron-Memorial High School student has undergone three surgeries and more are scheduled.
Doctors believe the teen could lose the use of his left eye.
Mahn said her son's physical injuries are minimal, however, compared with the sudden blow the teen suffered to his spirit.
The incident has left her usually outgoing, happy son withdrawn, frustrated and angry, she said.
"It's totally crushed any self-esteem he had," she said Wednesday, at her attorney Jerome Bowen's office. "He doesn't say it a lot but I feel it. This has really devastated him."
Now Mahn is hoping the teens responsible for her son's pain are punished in the court system.
They will be arraigned Sept. 10 before District Judge Kathy Hardcastle.
Detectives in Metro Police's Gang Unit say the teens are admitted members of a gang called the 311 Boyz.
They say the gang terrorized northwest Las Vegas neighborhoods near Centennial High School during the summer months and even captured some of their violent acts on videotape.
Authorities say the defendants attacked Hansen and his friends, Craig Arnett Lefevre and Joe Grill, at a party in a Summerlin neighborhood. The teens were targeted because they were not members of the gang, authorities said.
The defendants are charged with lining both sides of the street and throwing rocks and beer bottles at the car as it sped off.
"This was a riotous situation," said Bowen, who also represents Lefevre and Grill. "They set up a gauntlet for that truck to come down. It's horrific. It shocks the conscience."
But Gazlay, who spoke to the Sun at his attorney James Buchanan's office hours after the indictment was unsealed, tells a much different version of the events that unfolded that night.
He said police have "blown (the incident) way out of proportion" by unfairly labeling the teens as a gang and unfairly characterizing them as a group of dangerous thugs.
"They are scaring people in our community," he said of a community meeting Metro held Tuesday night at the Northwest Area Command Center.
"They are giving them a picture that this is a bad, hardcore group of kids. They're making this out to be worse than it is."
Gazlay, a 2003 graduate of Cimarron-Memorial High School, denied that he was a member of the 311 Boyz or that he was a member of a racist group. Authorities claim the name 311 represents KKK, because K is the 11th letter of the alphabet.
Gazlay said other teens told him that some of the boys made up the name while on a ski trip to Brian Head, Utah, but that the teens were not a gang. He also denied that the group was associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
"I'm not a member of any gang, let alone the 311 Boyz," he said. "I'm also not by any means a racist. I don't know where (police) are getting this from."
Police say some of their evidence includes videotapes of their violence filmed by the teens.
Gazlay said in Hansen's case, about 50 to 60 teens had gathered in a cul-de-sac in the gated community of Canyon Terrace in Summerlin on July 18. He attended the gathering with Harriman, his cousin, and several other friends, he said.
Gazlay said he was sitting on the tailgate of a truck and was talking with friends when a commotion broke out and he heard screaming and yelling behind him.
He said a fight broke out between a teen and a passenger in the truck over one of the teens' girlfriends. Gazlay would not specify which teen was involved in the fight but authorities claim it was Costello who attacked Lefevre.
"I saw somebody punching someone else through (the truck's) window," Gazlay said.
Gazlay also denied police's claims that he sat on the tailgate of the truck to prevent the three teens from leaving the party.
Gazlay said Lefevre revved his motor and "tried to show off" by putting his truck in reverse, but in doing so, he hit another teenager, and also hit a parked truck. That teenager was not injured, according to police.
When the truck hit the teen, Gazlay said, the crowd of teens became angry and tried to stop Lefevre from leaving in order to get Lefevre's license plate number.
"That kid looked like he was dead," he said. "That's when other kids tried to stop him from leaving. Those kids were just reacting to what happened. He'd just ran somebody over."
Gazlay said he did not witness the teens as they allegedly pummeled the truck with rocks and beer bottles as the truck traveled farther down the street.
He said he was sure, however, that the teens involved did not intend to hurt Hansen and that he sympathized with Hansen.
"That's something no one should have to go through," he said of Hansen's injuries. "I wouldn't wish that on anybody."
Gazlay also faces a battery charge in a separate case, in which he is charged with striking another teen with a crowbar.
Gazlay would not comment on that case, but said he believes that charge stems from "a case of mistaken identity." He said he is not captured on any videotapes.
Gazlay, along with seven of his co-defendants, are out of police custody on a $40,000 bond. Hart is still in custody at the Clark County Detention Center with bail set at $40,000.
Laurent said there has been no indication that the teens will commit new crimes while they await trial.
"Do we think with the publicity surrounding this case they would be foolish enough to go out and commit more crimes?" he asked. "We'd like to think they're smarter than that."
But Mahn said she isn't so sure. She said she is afraid the teens may return to "finish the job. "
"We live in fear every day," she said.
Bowen said Lefevre and Grill's families are also afraid of retaliation.
"We know what these kids are capable of but we don't know the full extent of this gang," he said. "There are still unknown factors."
Mahn said her son and his friends had gone to the party that night with three or four female friends.
Shortly after the three arrived, she said, they tried to leave because other teens at the party made the boys feel uncomfortable by "staring them down."
"It didn't take long for them to realize they were in a wrong situation," she said. "People were yelling and screaming and telling them they couldn't go."
She said the three teens tried to call the police from a cell phone inside the truck but they did not know the address.
Bowen said he believes the attack could have been planned.
"There is tremendous belief that one of the girls Tanner was with lured him to the party," he said.
Gabriel Grasso, Herbert Sachs and Karen Winkler, who represent Aguilar, Brandon Gallion and Anthony Gallion respectively, appeared when the indictments were unsealed but declined to comment.
Buchanan, however, described the 13 felony counts listed in the indictment as "overcharging" by the state.
"It's so overcharged it's ridiculous," he said. "It's a really vague indictment. There are no specifics of who did what. How can they charge my client with attempt murder without saying anything more than that he was there?"
Buchanan said the fact that prosecutors have not filed a gang enhancement also proves the group of teens is not a gang.
Laurent said prosecutors did not file a gang enhancement because the gang is a new gang and it would be difficult to prove that the crimes were committed to promote the gang.
Prosecutors have filed several deadly weapon enhancements, he said, which automatically doubles the penalty if the defendant is convicted.
"It doesn't really affect the way we prosecute the case," he said.
Now that the case is in district court, Laurent said, prosecutors can begin looking at ways to resolve the case. The cases could be separated, and several cases could be resolved through plea negotiations, he said.
At this point, however, prosecutors "have not decided to make an offer," he said.
As Hansen continues his recovery, Mahn said she is confident that the criminal justice system will come through for her son.
"I hope this won't be in vain," she said. "I hope this gang will be stopped. No mother or child should have to go through this."
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